Eideard

Of the approximately 2.8 million death reports the Social Security Administration receives per year, about 14,000 — or one in every 200 deaths — are incorrectly entered into its Death Master File, which contains the Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, death dates, zip codes and last-known residences of more than 87 million deceased Americans. That averages out to 38 life-altering mistakes a day…

“Erroneous death entries can lead to benefit termination, cause severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals, and result in the publication of living individuals’ [personal identifying information] in the [Death Master File],” the Inspector General said in its most recent evaluation of the database…

“It is unfortunate, but some of the death data that we post to our records … proves to be wrong and we correct it as soon as possible,” said administration spokesman Mark Hinkle. “Usually the error was inadvertently caused because of a human typing error when death information was entered into a computer system.”

This inaccurate information is then sold to the public, as well as to banks and credit bureaus. Those who are declared dead not only lose their ability to apply for credit or receive benefits, but they are also at a high risk for identity theft now that all of their personally-identifying information has been made public…

RTFA. One serious anecdotal tale, a fair piece of commentary – and suggestions on what to do if and when this ever happens to you.

The USPS changed us to an expansion zip code a number of years back – one that did not previously exist. It took over two years before we finally stopped being refused in the middle of an online or telephone purchase because company records said our zip code didn’t exist. We then had to offer our old zip – and hope that UPS or FedEx or the USPS would catch the wrong delivery address and eventually get our purchase to us.

Here in its entirety is Warren Buffett’s Op-Ed piece in today’s NY TIMES:

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click the photo to read the CNN article illustrating the study

Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent lifestyle in the United States. The share of 30- to 44-year-olds living as unmarried couples has more than doubled since the mid-1990s. Adults with lower levels of education — without college degrees — are twice as likely to cohabit as those with college degrees…

This report finds that greater economic well-being is associated with cohabitation for adults with college degrees, but not for those without college degrees…

Among college-educated adults, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($106,400 in 2009) slightly exceeded that of married adults ($101,160) and was significantly higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($90,067). However, among adults without college degrees, the median adjusted household income of cohabiters ($46,540) was well below that of married couples ($56,800) and was barely higher than that of adults without opposite-sex partners ($45,033).

The Pew Research analysis finds that differences in employment rates and household living arrangements of cohabiters with and without college degrees help explain gaps in their comparative economic well-being. These differences include:

Among the college-educated, two-earner couples were more prevalent among cohabiters (78%) than married adults (67%) in 2009. By working more, cohabiters offset married adults’ higher median earnings…

Among adults without college degrees, the majority of both married adults (85%) and cohabiters (67%) have children in the household. The relatively large presence and number of children in the households of cohabiters without college degrees may reduce the extent to which both partners in such relationships can earn income… [NSS]

The findings in this report suggest that cohabitation plays a different role in the lives of adults with and without college degrees. For the most educated, living as an unmarried couple typically is an economically productive way to combine two incomes and is a step toward marriage and childbearing. For adults without college degrees, cohabitation is more likely to be a parallel household arrangement to marriage — complete with children — but at a lower economic level than married adults enjoy…

Yeah, yeah. I know it sounds a bit dry – but, it confounds commonly accepted analysis which has obviously changed with time and culture.

Who knows? A few more decades and the falling away of the rest of the dross imposed by the religion business – and we might be able to evaluate cultural patterns based essentially on education and understanding.

Claire Jones, 38, of Tonypandy, in the Rhondda Valley, south Wales, had claimed poor health left her unable to cook or even chop vegetables herself. In reality, she used a gym and went dancing with her partner and earned cash working in cafés…

An undercover investigation was launched by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after an anonymous tip-off. It found Jones regularly checked into the fitness suite at her local leisure centre and used the gym, swimming pool and sauna.

She did a skydiving jump at Swansea Airport in October 2008 to raise cash for a cancer charity, Jonathan Holmes of the DWP told the court.

Investigators got their hands on a copy of the souvenir DVD presented to every skydiver who takes the 12,000ft plunge. It shows Jones lugging the heavy paraphernalia of a parachute on to a plane then doing a tandem jump with a professional…

Jones appeared in court today to admit two charges of failing to notify the authorities of a change in circumstances. The charges covered a period from April 2008 to August 2010.

Over that time she was given disability living allowance at the highest level and also received incapacity benefit for a bad back. She dishonestly claimed £6,016. About £900 had since been reclaimed by docking benefits she was still legitimately receiving.

Har.

What do you suppose the odds are that your surgeon is going
to show you these “before and after” illustrations?

THE woman’s hips bulged in unsightly saddlebags. Then she had liposuction and, presto, those saddlebags disappeared.

Photo after photo on plastic surgery Web sites make liposuction look easy, its results transformative. It has become the most popular plastic surgery, with more than 450,000 operations a year, each costing a few thousand dollars.

But does the fat come back? And if it does, where does it show up?

Until now, no one knew for sure. But a new study, led by Drs. Teri L. Hernandez and Robert H. Eckel of the University of Colorado, has answered those questions. And what he found is not good news.

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned nonobese women to have liposuction on their protuberant thighs and lower abdomen or to refrain from having the procedure, serving as controls. As compensation, the women who were control subjects were told that when the study was over, after they learned the results, they could get liposuction if they still wanted it. For them, the price would also be reduced from the going rate.

The result, published in the latest issue of Obesity, was that fat came back after it was suctioned out. It took a year, but it all returned. But it did not reappear in the women’s thighs. Instead, Dr. Eckel said, “it was redistributed upstairs,” mostly in the upper abdomen, but also around the shoulders and triceps of the arms…

It turns out … that the body controls the number of its fat cells as carefully as it controls the amount of its fat. Fat cells die and new ones are born throughout life. Scientists have found that fat cells live for only about seven years and that every time a fat cell dies, another is formed to take its place…

As for the women in the control group, when the study ended and they knew the results, more than half still chose to have liposuction.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to inform 6 million soldiers and their families of an agreement enabling Prudential Financial Inc. to withhold lump-sum payments of life insurance benefits for survivors of fallen service members, according to records made public through a Freedom of Information request.

The amendment to Prudential’s contract is the first document to show how VA officials sanctioned a payment practice that has spurred investigations by lawmakers and regulators. Since 1999, Prudential has used so-called retained-asset accounts, which allow the company to withhold lump-sum payments due to survivors and earn investment income on the money for itself.

The Sept. 1, 2009, amendment to Prudential’s contract with the VA ratified another unpublicized deal that had been struck between the insurer and the government 10 years earlier — one that was never put into writing, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue…

For a decade, until the contract was formally changed, Prudential wasn’t fulfilling its obligations to survivors of fallen service members, says Brendan Bridgeland, an insurance lawyer who runs the non-profit Center for Insurance Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It’s very clear they violated the original terms of the contract,” says Bridgeland, who is retained by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to represent consumers.

“Every veteran I’ve spoken with is appalled at the brazen war profiteering by Prudential,” says Paul Sullivan, who served in the 1991 Gulf War as an Army cavalry scout and is now executive director of Veterans for Common Sense…

That the VA allowed Prudential to issue retained-asset accounts for 10 years while the contract required lump-sum payouts is “more evidence that the VA was asleep at the wheel for a decade,” says Sullivan, who was a project manager and analyst at the VA from 2000 to 2006.

“When grieving families check the box that they want a lump sum, they should get it. We remain disappointed and irate at the VA’s failure to provide advocacy for veterans,” he says.

RTFA for the details. It’s long and there are a lot of details.

It stinks on ice!

California welfare recipients using state-issued debit cards withdrew more than $1.8 million in taxpayer cash on casino floors between October 2009 and last month.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order requiring welfare recipients to promise they will use cash benefits only to “meet the basic subsistence needs” of their families. The order also gave the state Department of Social Services seven days to produce a plan to reduce other types of “waste, fraud and abuse” in the welfare program.

The moves came after The Times reported Wednesday that officials at the department failed to notice for years that welfare recipients could use the state-issued cards to withdraw taxpayer cash at more than half of the tribal casinos and state-licensed poker rooms in California. The state initiated the debit card program in 2002.

Casino withdrawals, which represented far less than 1% of total welfare spending during the eight months for which the department released data, averaged just over $227,392 a month.

Schwarzenegger has already ordered the vendor that runs the state welfare system’s ATM network to prohibit the cards from working at casino machines…

No one noticed this was going on for eight years?

As foolish and unproductive is the practice of gambling away your welfare check, the failure of bureaucrats to keep an eye on spending is an example of how useless most “government jobs” become in the United States.

The probiotic yogurt-like drink DanActive reduced the rate of common sicknesses such as ear infections, sinusitis, the flu and diarrhea in daycare children, say researchers who studied the drink in the largest known probiotic clinical trial to be conducted in the United States. An additional finding, however, showed no reduction in the number school days missed. The study led by Daniel Merenstein, MD, of Georgetown University School of Medicine (GUSOM), was funded by The Dannon Company, Inc., and published online [.pdf] in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Probiotic foods are continuing to increase in popularity and some are marketed for the potential benefits of probiotics such as Lactobacillus casei (L. casei) DN-114 001, the probiotic in DanActive. Studies in other countries have found that probiotics, which are live micro-organisms, produce positive health benefits in children, including the reduction of school days missed due to infections. However, most of the research was conducted outside the United States in structured conditions not comparable to normal everyday living…

“…To our knowledge this is the largest probiotic clinical trial conducted in the U.S. and provides much needed data,” say the authors of the study. “We studied a functional food, not a medicinal product; parents will thus feed their children without any physician input and we felt it was best to assess [the drink] under similar conditions.”

The study…was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study – the gold standard in clinical research design. It included 638 healthy children, aged three to six, who attended school five days a week. Parents were asked to give their child a daily strawberry yogurt-like drink for 90 consecutive days. Some of the drinks were supplemented with the probiotic strain L. casei DN-114 001 (DanActive), while others had no probiotics (placebo). Neither the study coordinators, the children, nor the parents knew which drink was given to which participant until the study ended. In addition to phone interviews with researchers, parents kept daily diaries of their child’s health and the number of drinks consumed.

Researchers found a 19 percent decrease of common infections among the children who drank the yogurt-like drink with L. casei DN-114 001 compared to those whose drink did not have the probiotic. More specifically, those who drank DanActive had 24 percent fewer gastrointestinal infections (such as diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting), and 18 percent fewer upper respiratory tract infections (such as ear infections, sinusitis and strep). However, the reduction in infections did not result in fewer missed school days or activities – also a primary outcome of the study.

I haven’t any special hangups about company-sponsored tests when the institute performing the tests has a reputation for peer-review and maintains standards. Georgetown University not only does both – they’re in the limelight enough that I would expect peer communities in other schools to keep an eye on those standards.

Interesting study.

A French Muslim threatened with being stripped of his passport for practicing polygamy on Monday denied the accusation, saying he had only one wife and several mistresses.

The case of Lies Hebbadj, an Algerian-born butcher who became a French citizen when he married a French woman in 1999, has flared into a major political row with opposition parties accusing the government of exploiting the situation.

Hebbadj’s story came to light on Friday, when his wife complained she had been fined for driving while wearing an Islamic veil on the grounds that it was dangerous.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux accused Hebbadj of having four wives, who between them were claiming single parent benefits for his 12 children…

Hebbadj said only one was his wife and the others were lovers.

“If one can be stripped of one’s French nationality for having mistresses, then many French could lose theirs,” he told reporters in the Western city of Nantes, where he lives…

Local authorities on Monday launched an official investigation into the polygamy and benefit fraud claims.

One of the few situations where a trite phrase like “Damned if you do – Damned if you don’t” – fits.

A measure to restore jobless benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Monday as lawmakers returned to work after a two-week break.

By a vote of 60-34, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted to begin debate on a measure to extend jobless benefits for another month, which had lapsed amid partisan bickering. A final vote is expected later in the week.

With the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent, some 6.1 million Americans rely on jobless benefits to help them pay the bills as they look for work.

Those benefits expired for more than 200,000 Americans last week after Republican Senator Tom Coburn prevented a vote shortly before Congress left town…

Democrats said the program qualified as emergency spending amid the worst recession in 70 years, and thus did not need to be offset by tax increases or spending cuts elsewhere.

Four Republicans joined 56 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to take up legislation in the Senate.

Jobless benefits normally expire after six months but Congress has extended the program several times during a slump marked by unusually high levels of long-term joblessness.

More than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work longer than six months, according to the Labor Department.

COBRA healthcare subsidies for the unemployed and a federal flood-insurance program also have been disrupted. Doctors who treat patients under the Medicare health insurance program for the elderly and disabled also could see their pay slashed.

Anyone out of a job who ever votes for a Republican must be demented!

Meanwhile, a final vote is still needed and the Republicans who helped move the bill may yet return to march in lockstep towards the Dark Ages.